ART IN PROCESS,
ART AS PROCESS.
TOWARDS THE PAINT INSTALLATION PROJECT
JANUARY 17TH 2013.
30 October 2012
The Paint Installation Project has but me back into the
studio, spray cans, paper, acrylic, glue, wood, nails all coming together in
one smell of creating some narcissistic thought that will be placed on display
in the ritual of civility, socialization, class mannerism and economics. It’s
an intensely personal and frightening experience of displaying ones private
personal thoughts onto, into the world. The politician has nothing on the
artists in this regards. Imprinting their manifesto in a very organic and
manipulative format of acceptance of an aesthetic politics. PNM, UNC, COP has
nothing on the artists in this regards.
I have been to the opening of several artists as I develop
my work in the studio and its wonderful to see how their work influence their
development. The pieces are 63”X83” a first time working this size for an
exhibition, I built the frame by hand, then I brought in Anthony and his
assistant to build the last set of frames. The other idea of controlling the
production of the work. Developing a greater and deeper appreciation for
process. From the electric current that pulls the saw, to the truck that transport the lumber, to
the acquaintances at the hardware stores in my community, as you rotate through
their doors picking up a spray can here, glue there, brush here to see what
will work. What was interesting is the art stores in the area how lack they are
with specific tools for my trade, graphite file-ling, proper pencils, bright
hues that will pop the surface. Canvass comes in 60”, you have to order up from
that number, I found a 63”x7 yards of canvass at Fine Art, in the Grande Bazaar.
You have to order,
ORDER, creates
ORDER,
to get specifics.
In the studio you bear
naked thoughts.
Tons of paper, with planes, people cut of
magazines, police beating people, people beating people. There was this image
of a jet plane that I liked, the image stood there, black and white, it could
be manipulated to make stencils for spray paint transfer or the fact that it
was the image of the plane that our ex-Prime Minister wanted to buy for travel,
or that the plane holds this clandestine political imagery of a colonial,
importation of imperialism/exportation of people, beginning a cultural dialog
that is sorely unbalanced,
an escape,
from
for a
lot of people in this Third World Island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
The plane holds within it a full text of luxury up-ward
mobility, class behaviour, banality, crassness, engineering, design, speed,
oil...gas. It is a marvel of engineering a beauty to technology a symbol to
wealth and independence, all major corporate citizens have or travel by them.
So we wanted one, he wanted one.
The toilet,
early this morning my thoughts go back to the canvass that I stretched on
Monday and started with an image. In the artists meeting last night I sat there
consumed in thoughts, of the work, images being distorted, manipulated live in
my head. Suddenly all your thoughts are confronted by the surface and in some
way the memories of past dreams end up attempting to advance or hinder the
work. I must be prudent with my memories, learn how to edit them, they assist
in the journey of creating a new piece.
MEMORIES ARE IMPORTANT.
The surface of the canvass brings memories to nought, they
may not work, when conceptualization and the brush tries hard to implement.
One line
re-
inscribes
a whole
other
path.
Thursday
reconstruction of this particular painting continues as I try to come to
terms with what I’m seeing and what I will like to see. My inner voice screams
at me to shut out the graphics and nasty it up,
forget all
that bullshit the other voice like to tell you about clean lines,
shit
like that, shake up the shoulders, just step on the cockroach and make dust
rise... Just be me.
Friday
Well
there is some idea of finality with the piece, I step back and will return to
it. Next week I will begin another this week.
Saturday
10 November
6 a.m
Breakfast made, Blogona, green peppers and lettuce on brown bread, bowl of oats
and tea. While in the backround the Christmas pan of Robert Tobitt, my Saturday
ritual of music. We’re packing to head up to Rampanalgas for the weekend coming
down on Tuesday. I plan to work on the poster part of the exhibition, which I
will install in the entrance pathway of ground floor of Medula Gallery. Maybe
it will give some context to the work in the basement gallery or it can act as
totally throwing the viewer off, tilting their perception of what they will
witness in the basement.
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Wednesday
21 November.
AH
Rampanalgas where within the voice of friends chatting politics, social mess
and up-dating friends status, I made the poster out of ink and pieces of paper
cut from photocopied paper of planes that have become the motif in the work,
shaping before me. In the mist of crashing waves, the sound of nature I made
these very industrial, dark machines.
It was weird in away, how
the work came out that way. Maybe the sinister nature of the world overwhelms
the beauty of even that most precious of spaces. It comes with you, holding you
to a fearsome feeling, that constant terror of beauty that drives us all.
Art makes
the darkness palpable.
Last
night I went to Peter Sheppard, Sunday was Makemba Kunle at the Studio66, Monday was Shastri Maharaj at Y Gallery. The
art of Peter, Shastri and Makemba, stand interestingly juxtaposed to each
other. They all told of the historical development of where I sit. I seem to
deconstruct them both in one way or the other as I attempt to redevelop my
comfort zone.
In
Shastri I see the personal memory of space, Peter speaks to the technically
savy, static, driven form of art capitalism, Makemba tells me of memory,
activism, the wider playing field that art holds in all the three, in one way
or the other.
Tomorrow is another exhibition.
Thursday
22 November
Last
night I went to the photograph show hosted by the Art Society celebrating the
50th Anniversary of Trinidad and Tobago. The little gallery of the
Art Society was transformed in memory, little nicks of our memories was pulled
to the front, de Clark man add 1970, I was four years old at that time, but the myth of
the Clark in the imagination of young men during the 70’s and today is large,
when I came of age I got my Clarks, which was eventually stolen at my friend
Richard’s party while we all slept.
DAT! was the
imagery of the Clarks in I man HEAD, young men wanted it bad, bad.
There were other images, Abu Bark surrendering in the coup,
I REMEMBER THAT
DAY OF THE COUP I WAS HEADING TO THE JAMAT TO SPEAK FOR ATTIBA, WHEN I PULLED
IN THE CAR PARK IT LOOKED EMPTY, SO I TURNED AROUND ANDWENT BACK HOME, IT WAS
DURING THIS PERIOD OF MY LIFE THAT I WAS STUDY THE POLITICS AND THE SPRITUALITY
OF ISLAM, WELL THE COUP KILLED THAT IN ME ,
The
photo of Abdul Malick being arrested, Rafick Sha and Rex La Sal. These images
black and white also brought me back to what I was doing in the studio, the
manipulation of Xeroxed photos taken from papers, mags and other archives of
popular images that told a story, resembled a truth or a myth of design that
could be told.
There is the court case, concerning the collaged artist who
appropriated the works from a magazine about Rastafari’s and used it in is art, fetching fabulous
prices. The judge stated that infringement of right to the photographer wouldn’t be considered if
the artists who appropriated the work can show that he improved on the
appropriated image.
Working with the same temperament, I wondered.
Rachel came over to view the work one of the few artist to
visit the studio ever. We went through the work, her comments were helpful, as
you become very in your face with the work, you need that intellectual
stimulation to push it further, sort out composition, colour and other
technical issues that may be too close for me to see. I’m at the point where
the work needs to be re-edited, I will be taking them out and working on all of
them in one energy making final statements. It is November, there is December, and
then there will be the final moment of the rush of energy that will slam
everything.
Tonight is another presentation by Alexis Samilies
photographs at Medula Gallery.
Tuesday
27th November.
Since
Thursday there was Alexis’s exhibition of photographs at Medulla Gallery. I
meet Peter Doig at the exhibition and asked if he will have a look at the
paintings, which I will show him after the 22nd.
I went to the printers to speak to them about another
project that I’m working on for another client for their Christmas gift. While
there I enquired about the printing of the posters which will enhance the Paint
Installation Project, I will pritn 8-10 posters, black on brown paper. They
couldn’t do it, nah they could do it, but developing the plates will make the
project expensive, but hear dis I was telling RALPH the man at the printer,
give me a cost
Let see how it will look economically. But de man went on and on until he recommended David a
screen printer, who I will be meeting on Wednesday to see what will be his
thing about printing the posters.
Today I will be meeting with Catherine Kumar of the Chamber
of Commerce to present to speak about the project that we’re working on. How
does this affect work in the studio? I’m not sure, In one way they seem separate.
The worlds, these two projects seem so separate, apart from each other in a way
that it needs to be. Some projects shouldn’t morph into each other, but in some
phillosophical and intellectual level they caress each other’s lips, they feed
off each other from that internal physicality that is constant. Like the
posters one thing I find interesting about them is how far apart they’re
intellectually and aesthetically, maybe why I fell it will be appropriate for
the show. As it will create tWo languages one ontop and the other in the
basement.
Wednesday 28th November.
The meeting with the Chamber of Commerce went well. I tried
to impart the importance of the project not only as a way of speaking to
community renewal but to the wider important discussion of the added value
component to the diversification project that the national efforts will have to
focus on. The meeting ended with an intention and I need to meet that intention
with the Ministry of Sport. What was also in the discussion is the big brother
request from both the Energy Chamber and the Chamber of Commerce. To protect
the project from the madding and sometimes hostile and inconsistent treatment
with creative project.
This cynicism is deep in me as I go into any relationship
with the state, there is this history of inadequate relationship to idea that I
have gotten from the politicians, technocrats and bureaucrats have left me
scared and sceptical about the relationship that will develop. So my
relationship development plan is one of a democratic one. You keep it as open
as possible to the public, I will think that all the stake holders will keep
the idea balanced and pure.
It will be cool to get international support for the idea,
Sunday 2 December 2012
Its December and I have gone to two, nah, four printers and
one screen printer, individual printer. So far the average cost is $2,000 for 8
prints at 25”X19”. I need to clarify certain job that will be done for the cost
being delivered. One cost DIGITAL PRINTING came in at $999, OFFSET
PRINTING COST IS $2,047.92. 
So lets querry the quality of work I will call Adele and
ask her what she thinks.
Bit like I tell the guy at the printers I will be
manipulating the work after its printed once again to get some a further
dialogue on the idea of mechanical and the human, weaving together something
that can or cannot be seen, graffiti in the language of mechanical
reproduction...
Yesterday we went down to Mayaro, with a friend who is an
economic developer. Raining, wet sand, light coconut trees blew in the rain,
the drive was a mellow damp romantic scenario of friendly jargon about aesthetic
development and politics. The topic of aesthetic development and what that
means from the position of an implementer of development at that scale. There
must be a shift, the attempt of creating a shift is as important as the idea
that the gas sector is winning down. But although there is the political
understanding of that shift there is surely the intellectual capacity to
understanding the nurturing environment needed to support that creativity.
Bureaucrats and technocrats haven’t gained that language to the hostile nature
of business education based on the idea of a neo-capitalist environment based on core profits.
While missing all the pertinent steps of nurturing, nature and culture
and the time it will take to deconstruct and reconstruct this.
Aesthetic development can form an integral part of that
model.
The debate will continue as it must eh...in
Tuesday
4th December 2012
I
read one of the posts on the Arts Group Page, the continuing discussion and
fight between the artists and the state in the dividing up the cultural sector
under the umbrella of staking the arts to provide the economic outsourcing that
we have professed that it can be. I wonder about the exhibition and the
ambition of this artist wanting to explore the wider world view sit with
artists and institutions and build projects. I have been able to build projects
here... but never to their full potential or their fullest, they were
successful when you consider the environment that it came out from.
The Queens
Park Savannah Paddock Wall Mural Project, the interesting thing
about this project, after a week of painting on the wall, we went to National
Carnival Commission management, the commissioner of the mural, who were like –
wha!, you where painting the wall? Eventually were paid by the Ministry of
Tourism to the
UWI
Sculptural Project all had support, all had economics
and all had some insidious reason why they were never fully completed, we could
never put a full stop behind those projects.
The Urban Heart Beat Project, there was a
full stop next to it, when we went to the launch of the book that was published
about the project...
full stop!
On to the next project.
So here I’m with another project the
Paint Installation Project and
The Sculptural Playground Project, there is an
intention behind them and I will have to see how their intentions will play
out...
These apprehensions are part of the frustration dilemma
that needs to be addressed in the development of the Trinidad and Tobago
Creative Industries Company TTCIC, the Art Council or whatever incarnations
that it ends up being.
We need to be able to put full stops next to projects.
A full stop means!
1.
Documentation.
2.
Analysis –
A. Economic,
B.
Philosophical,
C. Social,
D. Cultural,
E.
Aesthetically,
F. Politically
G. Marketing.
3. Documentation of
analysis – through symposiums, conferencing, talks, circles, media. Both
regional and international.
Monday
10th December 2012
The
days have passed and I have been able to document the work, the photo session
happened on Wednesday after I realized after discussion with Martin Moutett and
Geoffrey Maclean of the Medulla Gallery. Three pics, for the invitation, the
press, the artist bio, so on returning home I did an economic review of the
project, money to be invested to make this happen. Which is around 6-8,000
thousand. I’m not sure if there will be a catalogue, but I will have to do one
if the expansion will be kept in motion.
Diversification of the artist, is important in my mind.
After the photo session which finished around 11a.m, then I
went with my cousin to Scrip J and ordered the posters, 8 of them at $845.25
hundred dollars, digital prints, 18”X24”. Then I picked up 10 T-shirts from
Business Boosters. Then we ended the day at the mall with some food from the
PAK-CHOY, a dognut and a shot of dark coffee. We chatted about business and
investing in ideas, the truth and the reality of it, the labour, the returns,
family in all this.
It is interesting this topic of business as Sunday I went
to the thesis presentation of S6xyPink.com by designer Adell Todd and to
Belmont to pick up a projector from Sean, who was installing Marlon Darbeau’s
installation for his presentation of By Making production of living designs.
There is this spirit of enterprising, this thing artist-designers produce in a
manner that is both personal and entrepreneurial.
for
Conscious Capitalism comes to mind, in the spirit of the meaning there is a lot
to learn and gather from the word. But the artists here are tackling that in an
aesthetic intellectual level that will get us there.
Well today I confirmed the posters; it will be interesting
to see how they come out. I did all my calls to the Chamber’s, to remind them
about the letters, which I will like to send to the Ministry this week.
Diligent duty task, that the artists must be committed to their project.
A.
Call – be a nuisance
B.
Write – learn to write, spell and get a friend,
partner to write (once he, she can write better than you).
C.
Drop off your letters in person, mail is good but
always see it to the assistant of the person you want it to go to( if you can’t
do at least see it to the front desk), let the guard security get to know you,
the front desk person, the boss personnel assistant learn her name, she learns
your name, she likes you.
D.
Always be early! Dis is fer al dem Trini (ah don’t
really know about Tobagonians) who ah feel dem is ah true Trini an like late
ting.
E.
Be honest, to the idea, people will feel it off you
when you forcing things.
Thursday
13th December 2012
The
week has been caught up looking after the paint project my partner has
instigated on my behalf, I ask. So I have to run to the hardware, the paint
shop, the other paint shop and the other hardware. What I have realized with
leaving the house you kill studio energy and time. Just putting your foot out
on the street, time slips by fast, the P.M. comes fast
Work Habits,
6a.m.
get up, prepare breakfast, work on computer, shower,
9a.m.in
the studio,
12p.m
– lunch/rest
1p.m
– 7p.m. back in the studio,
8p.m-1a.m
- there is couch work (this varies, but couch work can look very disgustingly
as laziness, as you can look like you vegin out ), which will comprise of
journaling/drawing/development drawing which will go to. When time is messed
with things are thrown off. Working on the land, I have realized how in three
hours, much can be accomplished physically and aesthetically.
BY MAKING, Marlon Darbeau on Tuesday 11th presented his ideas of living designs at the
Grandeson Lab, Belmont. If we get away from the quite solitude of lines, all
converging to create these peaceful, structural objects, with furry feet.
Marlon designs are a testament to patients, a penance to the studious art of
design and what comes from penance is the simplicity of structural form, which
hides the complex relationship of construction relations that develops between
the designer and the institutions of making.
At this point is where I need to expand the discussion, the
relationship that was fostered. By Making, which was an investment of 3 years.
BY MAKING speaks heavily about manufacturing, replication and development,
venture capital, patenting, copyrights, marketing, labour, cost, cultural and
physical
environment needed to bring these beautiful object to
market, craft skill education, accessibility etc. I was having a discussion
about law, the proposed Quota Laws, which will be needed to be put in place to
foster a local design economy to protect a design environment.
We will need to re-engineer how we look at local design...
buying local.
We will need to walk into Courts, American Stores and see a
BY MAKING, A
DEAN ARLEN, A LESLEY ANN NOEL, A RICHARD RAWLINS, A LIONEL SPENCER, A MARTIN. A
YOU! AN US.
What was interesting about that discussion was and is how
we seem very fearful of the implementation of protective measures that will see
our dependency on the outside lessen, we’re scared of that release, unsure of
our own economic power, we hold onto the economic power born from our colonial
past and present.
BY MAKING has
proven that economic power can have a style, simple, affordable, it can be
appealing to the eyes... functional to the form. Thanks man for your
contribution to the discourse.
BY MAKING, is
a very personal testament to the verification of the ARTIST AND ARTISTS,
investment in their projects.
So fire bun, all dat talk about artists depending on the state and
hand out.
Dat one is for Calvin French- out-ah-timing statement about artists looking
for hand outs.
Monday
11th December 2012.
There was also the Department of Creative and Festival
Arts, celebration of 25 years, where they presented work from their alumni and
their present student body. I missed it, I was planning to pass through this
week, but a friend mentioned that the last day was on Friday.
Sunday 16th Bird Song (pan yard) Music Academy,
has their annual Christmas presentation on Auzonvill Park.
FREE,FREE,FREE!!!!!!! The people came out, with their chairs, their containers
of food, the box of KFC. There was the lady with her children selling hot dogs,
sweets, sea-drink, I had a Smalta and some sweets.
There was the Rasta selling nuts, two ital please... at the
corner of my eye I saw the man selling inflatable toys, they where all getting
comfortable sales... OK, lets not forget the music, it was sweet professional
and current. What I learnt there last
night was how different a conductor who knows how to motivate children or their
charges can make a difference in how the music can be presented. There was Andy
Narrel, Jessel Murray (UWI) and the professor. There was the UWI Arts Chorale,
the Bird Song Pan, Bird Song Brass, Bird Song Assemble and the professor’s
brass band (forgot their names).
This will continue Please..................
LOOK OUT FOR THE PAINT INSTALLATION PROJECT. JANUARY 17TH 2013, MEDULLA GALLERY
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